No Despite To The Dead.

If that my fate has now fulfill'd my year,
And so soon stopt my longer living here;
What was't, ye gods, a dying man to save,
But while he met with his paternal grave!
Though while we living 'bout the world do roam,
We love to rest in peaceful urns at home,
Where we may snug, and close together lie
By the dead bones of our dear ancestry.

Tread, sirs, as lightly as ye can
Upon the grave of this old man.
Twice forty, bating but one year
And thrice three weeks, he lived here.
Whom gentle fate translated hence
To a more happy residence.
Yet, reader, let me tell thee this,
Which from his ghost a promise is,
If here ye will some few tears shed,
He'll never haunt ye now he's dead.

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
"The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay."
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

I must
Not trust
Here to any;
Bereav'd,
Deceiv'd
By so many:
As one
Undone
By my losses;
Comply
Will I
With my crosses;
Yet still
I will
Not be grieving,
Since thence
And hence
Comes relieving.
But this
Sweet is
In our mourning;
Times bad
And sad
Are a-turning:
And he
Whom we
See dejected,
Next day
We may
See erected.

After the burial-parties leave
And the baffled kites have fled;
The wise hyaenas come out at eve
To take account of our dead.

How he died and why he died
Troubles them not a whit.
They snout the bushes and stones aside
And dig till they come to it.

They are only resolute they shall eat
That they and their mates may thrive,
And they know that the dead are safer meat
Than the weakest thing alive.

(For a goat may butt, and a worm may sting,
And a child will sometimes stand;
But a poor dead soldier of the King
Can never lift a hand.)

They whoop and halloo and scatter the dirt
Until their tushes white
Take good hold of the army shirt,
And tug the corpse to light,

And the pitiful face is shewn again
For an insta...

Hence, hence, profane! soft silence let us have
While we this trental sing about thy grave.

Had wolves or tigers seen but thee,
They would have showed civility;
And, in compassion of thy years,
Washed those thy purple wounds with tears.
But since thou'rt slain, and in thy fall
The drooping kingdom suffers all;

Chor. This we will do, we'll daily come
And offer tears upon thy tomb:
And if that they will not suffice,
Thou shall have souls for sacrifice.
Sleep in thy peace, while we with spice perfume thee,
And cedar wash thee, that no times consume thee.

Live, live thou dost, and shall; for why?
Souls do not with their bodies die:
Ignoble offsprings, they may fall
Into the flames of funeral:
Whenas the chosen seed shall s...